Jack Lynch

Fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in English literature at the University of Pennsylvania, working on a dissertation on eighteenth-century British literature, especially Samuel Johnson, with an interest in computing in the humanities (and in the department).

This Semester

I'm now in the UK for the Johnson Conference in Birmingham and some research in London; I'll be back on 12 October. Until then, E-mail access may be spotty -- sorry about that.

I've now gone into semi-retirement on Stuart Curran's Pennsylvania Electronic Edition of Frankenstein, and will serve only as a technical consultant until it's polished bright and shiny. When I get back from London, I'll consider the panels I'll be leading at NEASECS in Boston in December (a roundtable on teaching the eighteenth century) and ASECS in South Bend in April (as at ASECS '97, I'm running a session on electronic resources in eighteenth-century studies). With the Field Exam and Fifty-Book Exam behind me (and I only am escaped alone to tell thee), I'm trying my damnedest to work on a dissertation (oh, yeah, that). And then it's time to start thinking about the job market: the time is come, the day draweth near (Ezek. 7:12). Some time in there I hope to publish my Johnsonian Bibliography and to co-edit a one-volume edition of Johnson's Rambler. In my oh-so-copious spare time, I do computing support for the department and run the mailing list for Calls for Papers. I helped with the department's newsletter, now available. I maintain the Conference Page on Romantic Circles. I work as copyeditor, compositor, editorial assistant, and dogsbody on The Age of Johnson (volume 8 is now available, and volume 9 went to the printer on 26 June). And I continue to devote my endless leisure hours to scanning texts (mostly from the eighteenth century) and pretending I actually know the little German and Italian I've tried to learn in the last few years.

Course Materials

Syllabi, readings, and other materials from the courses I've taught are preserved here for posterity:

"Sex, Women, and Violence in Medieval Culture" (Autumn '94)
"From Epic to Hypertext" (Spring '95) (see also my students' final hypertext projects)
"The Age of Reason?" (Autumn '95)
"Writing the Essay" (Spring '96)
Cybertheory (Autumn '96)

There's also a syllabus for a planned-but-canceled course on Orientalism. All my classes (and anyone who's curious) are encouraged to consult my guide to grammar and style.

Research

As I find the time to post papers I've delivered, they'll appear here.

"Preventing Play: Annotating the Battle of the Books," delivered 13 October 1994 at EC/ASECS, Penn State (set to appear, in a longer version, in Texas Studies in Literature & Language);
"Babel and Empire in Paradise Lost" from the 1994 CMERS meeting in Binghamton;
"Authorizing Ossian" from the 1995 MWASECS meeting;
"The Ground-Work of Style" from the 1996 NEASECS meeting;
"Workshop of Filthy Creation, Cyberspace Division," from the 1996 NASSR meeting;
"Hideous Progeny, Version 0.4 Beta," from Alan Liu's Canon and the Web panel at the 1996 MLA;
"Studied Barbarity: Johnson, Spenser, and Literary Progress" (an expanded version will appear in The Age of Johnson vol. 9, coming to a library near you -- and given AMS's speedy turnaround, it should be ready in time for my retirement party).

For Stuart Curran's English 205/505, "Electronic Literary Studies," I put together some text analysis software.

Home Pages of Friends More Talented than Me

Among my favorite home pages: Raphael Carter's AngelHome is a delight. I met him, along with Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet, Mason West, Rebecca J. Anderson, Rich Veraa, and Patrick Goodman on the Fido WRITING echo. (It was on Fido that I came to know Dennis Havens, whose novels I'm glad to promote.) Don't miss the home pages of Matthew Cafiero, Sam Goldberg, Lawrence Warner, Dan White, Lana Schwebel, Dan Traister, and Judith Bush. Although we argue over the fine points of HTML, Steven Morgan Friedman produces some of the best pages around. And be sure to check out Meng Weng Wong, whose home page (though sadly put out to pasture some months ago) is the stuff legends are made of -- only Zola's home page gives Meng a run for his money.

Personal Stuff

I've collected some miscellaneous links, some of them as close to fun as a downtrodden graduate student is allowed to get.

The wittiest thing I've seen in months, from my friend Raphael Carter, with whom I've been known to have conversations like this. Another recent favorite is a College Application Essay.

Please send questions, comments, requests, and recommendations to jlynch@dept.english.upenn.edu [dept.english].

Short-cuts to pages I maintain: